Industries, such as construction, agriculture, mining, often employ articulated machines. An articulated machine, generally, includes front and rear frames hinged together by a hitch joint for relative pivotal movement. When one of the frames is moved relative to the other, the articulated machine turns to change a direction of travel. Unlike cars and trucks that can change direction only by rotating the wheels, articulated machine require a clearance distance of at least half the machine's length in order to complete a turn. This large reconfiguration of the machine's clearance distance may sometimes be hazardous in confined areas, when the machine is in close proximity with surrounding external objects including, but not limited to, other working machines, buildings and rocks. This may introduce difficulties or unanticipated interactions with the surrounding objects and lead to collisions when executing a turn or other operations in such machines.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,721,842 B2 (hereinafter referred to as the '842 patent) relates to an articulated work vehicle steering system with controlled steering cushioning and associated method. The steering system is provided for a work vehicle including articulated first and second vehicle sections. The steering system includes a controller adapted to determine from a speed-request signal, if a requested steering speed requested for the first vehicle section relative to the second vehicle section, about an articulation axis towards an end of an end region of a position range of the first vehicle section, is at least equivalent to a predetermined steering speed. The steering system further includes determining from a position signal if the first vehicle section is positioned in the end region of the position range; and, if the requested steering speed is at least the predetermined steering speed and the first vehicle section is positioned in the end region, and based on that signals that an actual steering speed of the first vehicle section be lower than the requested steering speed.
The steering system of the '842 patent provides manipulation of steering speed of an articulated work vehicle; however, such steering system does not provide any means to detect and/or prevent or mitigate collisions of such machines with external objects.